


The Best Wrong Thing

by lq_traintracks (lumosed_quill)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fingerfucking, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Post-Hogwarts, sex on a train
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 02:18:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6934015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumosed_quill/pseuds/lq_traintracks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione and Pansy have an affair eighth year. Fast-forward 20 years to when their lives collide once more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Wrong Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for potteresque_ire's prompt: _train tracks_

They hadn't planned it. None of it.

Sure, once they'd got going, a few weeks in when they both realised they were far from stopping, it became a regular thing: desperate fumblings in the sixth floor girls' bathroom, up against the squeaky loo door that never locked right; in the restricted section long after midnight, a hot mouth skimming down Hermione's body in the dark; forgotten classrooms left empty when, post-war, Hogwarts attendance was down by half, families decimated, blown to the far reaches of the magical world.

Hermione had come back. Of course she had.

Nobody had expected it of Pansy Parkinson. The girl who'd wanted to trade Harry Potter for the mere semblance of safety.

So much unexpected.

Nine months of unexpected. They'd never talked about where it might go. They'd never talked about how it might end.

The train's whistle blows, and from her compartment, Hermione watches the steam caught by the late spring breeze, ripped in two like a frayed ribbon, only to dissipate altogether. The train begins to move, and, as always, there's that trick of the eye: as though it's the platform itself – the trees and hillside, the edge of Hogsmeade, Hagrid waving there – that steadily crawls away, plate tectonics shifting crust over molten mantle. Hermione had loved those old geology books she'd found in one of her mother's chests. She'd flipped through the glossy pages of photographs, striated rock and pyroclastic flows, and she'd wondered if the scientists – tiny and smiling on a plume of hardened basalt – were who her mother, at one time, had aspired to be.

Once the train picks up speed, the sensation of motion winds its way into her body, from the soles of her feet, into her pelvis, her lungs, her eyes. The trees lose their leaves to the blur. The train buffeting against the rails sways her back and forth. She's leaving.

"Granger."

The slide of the door. The clicking of a lock. Her breath.

Magic stirs the air, and the privacy charms go up. She feels Pansy approach behind her, watches her reflection strengthen in the glass.

She closes her eyes for a moment. _Vertigo, faster, the train's engine roaring through her veins…_ She turns, her eyes coming open, and Pansy cups her face and kisses her hard.

"Mmm." Her back pressed to the glass, the vibration of the train, Pansy's hands shaping her body.

"I want you," Pansy's lips leave hers to say in a whisper. Fingers opening her blouse.

Hermione wore a skirt today. Not caring to consider why – _access, access, access, one last time, hope_ – she wraps a leg around her lover's hips, and they grind against one another, Hermione's whimpered sighs caught in another kiss. Pansy's hand descends, finding her already so wet – a laughing smile. God, that dark chuckle that invaded her sleep and found her touching herself beneath the covers.

Sure fingers slip inside her knickers, her breath catching. Cruel, soft circles around her clit. "You know I like it when you say it," murmured against the corner of her mouth. "Say it."

"Sod off." But then she obliges: "Pansy."

A stifled shiver and a moan against her neck; fingers push inside of her.

Open mouth, gasping breath – _again, again, again_ – the whipping world at her back and Pansy everywhere else.

Hermione braces a hand on the lip of the window, wraps an arm around Pansy's neck. She rides, skirt bunched at her hips, a bra strap falling off her shoulder. Pansy splays a hand against the glass, rests their foreheads together.

"Pansy, I'm going to— Oh Merlin, I'm going to—"

Pansy strikes, kissing her, and Hermione comes. 

They bullet through time and space, and Pansy's fingers sink slowly into Hermione's hair.

~

"Mum! Have you seen my wand cleaner?"

Hermione sighs. This was, of course, not shouted but _Sonorused_ from downstairs, when Hermione knows good and well her daughter has a perfectly effective unicorn Patronus she could utilise.

Still, Hermione shouts back, "No, but you can take mine!" Then to herself, "Merlin." She begins rifling through the bottom drawer of her dresser. Old inkwells, a chipped pestle with no mortar to be found, stack of parchments… She picks them up to peer beneath, and one slips free, an old clipping from the _Prophet_.

Hermione's gaze catches on the bold type:

_Pansy Parkinson Engaged to Wed Theodore Nott in Small, Private Ceremony_

_When reached for comment on the marriage, an aunt proclaimed the betrothed to be "quite satisfied with the match", which was arranged by the two families._

The article has sepiaed, the edges worn smooth and soft by time. Twenty years' worth of time.

"Mum!"

"Merlin's sake." Hermione ignores the rapid trill of her heartbeat, setting the article aside. She spies the wand cleaner rattling about in the drawer and snatches it up. They're already very near to being late as it is. No time for encroachment from the past. Even though it's suffocating her. Suddenly and presently _here_ , under her skin, infecting every breath. "Help your brother pack!"

"MU-UH-UM!" As only a fifteen year-old can.

And then Hugo. Of course. "I left my robes at Dad's!"

"Super," Hermione grumbles, stalking out into the hall.

She finds her children, two owls, three chests, and a morning's load of bother all crammed into the foyer.

"Ready?" she asks cheerily.

"No!" they complain simultaneously.

She ushers them out. "I'll Owl your father for the robes. Please, _please_ try to remember anything else you may have left there."

Rose stops stubbornly just over the threshold and digs like a badger in her bottomless bag.

"What is it now?" Hermione sighs, a headache settling under her eyebrows, in her very sockets. She pinches the bridge of her nose.

"The last five _Prophets_ ," Rose says, thrusting them at her. "They've been coming to Dad's. That's why you haven't been receiving them."

"Two years. Two _years_ we've had different residences and the bloody paper can't—"  
"Never mind," Rose interrupts, all haughty, patronising calm. Wonder where she gets that. "We're late."

They arrive at Kings Cross with ten minutes to spare, which is late by Hermione's standards, and still Hugo drops three things on the way in: tie, Owl treats, Rememberall. Typical.

They take the wall at a run, and there's the Hogwarts Express, as shiny as when she was a first year. Steam lazes from the stack. They weave through the crowd. Hermione apologises when she runs into a man trying to comfort a little boy whose siblings are boarding the train.

"Study hard," Hermione tells Hugo as he hugs her tight. "Have some fun," she says to Rose, kissing her cheek. It all happens very quickly. There's never enough time. 

Hugo gives her an enthusiastic wave from the steps of the train. Rose is already laughing with friends. Hermione hadn't noticed, but her hand has landed on her heart as she watches them. She waves once more and blows a kiss.

She's turning to go when the flare of a scarlet coat catches her eye. High heels, long legs, clean line of her neck. Pansy Parkinson waves at a boy, face framed in a compartment window, then she crosses her arms, a soft, wistful smile curving her lips.

Hermione's frozen. The shout of the train's whistle startles her back to breathing, but before she can decide – _turn away, run, laugh with glee_ – Pansy pivots and stops short. Their gazes lock. Pansy's lips part slowly and she blinks. Long moments go by, and then Pansy's walking toward her, her stride elegant, contrasting with the uncertainty of her expression.

Those large, dark eyes, lined in kohl with a steady hand. Earrings dripping from her lobes.

"Granger." Same voice. There's some silver in her dark bob now.

The train has begun to move, and Hermione is struck with the renewed vertigo of it, as if it's they that are moving, shifting, traveling away from reality.

Hermione can only break her own silence with a whisper – but it's her name. Pansy exhales in a rush, a smile daring at her lips.

"How are you?" Hermione asks. "Was that your son?" She lifts her chin at the train now pulling out of the station.

"Yes. Benjamin." She turns softer. "Benji."

Hermione's gaze drops to Pansy's hands. She looks for the ring and finds none. She tucks her hair behind her ear and tries to cover for her investigative glances. 

"We've divorced," Pansy blurts.

"Oh?"

"Well. I finally gave the family an heir, so…." Spots of colour bloom on her pale cheeks. It looks like shame. She drops her gaze. "He wanted to wait for Benji to go to Hogwarts. Before we…" She looks back up at Hermione, stricken. "Granger, I—"

"Coffee."

"What?"

Hermione swallows against the fear, the utter terror that she's doing the exact wrong thing, at the worst possible time, and for terrible reasons.

_Again and again and again…_

"Would you like to go for coffee? I know a place." She's short of breath. The train whistles again, this time more distant.

"I—" Pansy appears stunned. Hermione's never seen her look like this. "I'd love to."

She knows she shouldn't. In the same way she's unclear if going for coffee would be a mistake, she's perfectly aware that reaching out and touching her is the worst thing she could do. But she's doing it. Hermione's reaching out and taking Pansy's hand.

Pansy inhales and looks down at their fingers. She tightens her grip, and Hermione feels the strength in it, the yearning throbbing through them in the bustling quiet.

It's the best wrong thing she's ever done.

~

The morning light is a lavender-gray, like it might try to be sunny for a few minutes here and there. Hermione drags a shawl-like blanket off the back of the sofa on her way to the window and wraps herself warm. She's been in this flat three days. She's learning its secrets, its little comforts.

She hears the creak of a floorboard and smiles. A gigantic yawn follows.

"I started some coffee," Hermione says over her shoulder.

"Thank Merlin," Pansy groans.

She feels Pansy approach behind her, watches her reflection strengthen in the glass.

She closes her eyes for a moment. _Vertigo, faster…_ The sound of the train rattling toward the mouth of the tunnel enters the room. She feels it in her feet. She knows the moment the Tube emerges into the light, eating the tracks beneath and slinking toward the horizon. She doesn't have to see it.

Hermione turns, her eyes coming open. Pansy cups her face and kisses her hard.


End file.
